diumenge, 10 de gener de 2016

TOLERANCE WITH JIHADISM: BIG PROBLEMS FOR CATALONIA’S BODY POLITIC

Islamist
attempts occurred last November in Paris have raised alarm among European
politicians. The political class that until recently claimed that immigration
would be integrated into European societies and that our societies would become
into a model of harmonious multiculturalism, begins now to question the failure
of their claims, and begin to see the millions of descendants of Muslim
immigrants, as a serious problem difficult to solve.

The
consequences of this change of mind are being translated into a series of
preventive measures in domestic policy, an open debate on the Schengen Treaty,
and also in relations between the EU countries.

As the
professor of Nagoya University and expert on geopolitics, Angel Calvo says,
France is unwilling to allow a new state so lax and permissive with jihadism as
Belgium -the country with the highest percentage number of Islamic radicals- on
its southern border. That means that the policy of the Government "open
door" to the "pseudo-refugees" is a new handicap for recognition
by France -and other EU countries to Catalonia as an independent state[1].

In recent
weeks, the “Generalitat”[2]
and the Catalan parties that support it, have taken a further step in its
policy of “open doors”, ensuring that every new immigrant will have two years
of official economic aid for clothing, food and rent. What is not just a
political blunder and an injustice to the native Catalan population, but it
increases the risk of the arrival of jihadists in Catalonia over the next two
years.

At the same
time it should be noted that while France closed three radical mosques
following the terrorist attacks in Catalonia have opened twenty clearly Salafist
mosques only during the last year[3].
So, the total number of radical mosques in Catalonia, reach to eighty mosques,
an eerily dangerous number.

For years
the Catalan nationalist parties have tried to attract the support of immigrants,
creating public foundations as "Nous Catalans"[4],
affirming that every immigrant will get the “Catalan nationality”, and holding electoral
meetings in mosques. A wrong strategy that has had no result: Muslim leaders
call to vote for the PSOE[5];
a strategy that only have created distrust in the EU towards a possible
independent Catalonia.

Decidedly
due to political infantilism Catalonia will never be independent. Achieving
recognition of the EU is much more serious and requires serious policy on
immigration.